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Focus on Multilateral Agencies

This working paper is part of WRI’s Climate Finance Series, which tackles a broad range of issues relevant to public donors, intermediaries, and recipients of climate finance. A subset of this series, including this working paper, examines how public funds can leverage private sector investment...

The Global Impact Investment Network defines impact investments as “investments made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return.” Few people understand that concept better than Jed Emerson.

1) If you were in an elevator with a promising developing country environmental entrepreneur, what would be your advice on how to lock-in investment (whether from the traditional or impact investment community)?

This document provides a glossary of financing instruments and the mechanism of these instruments. These definitions may serve as a useful reference for public sector decision-makers evaluating the broad toolkit
of options available to support private sector climate change mitigation...

These tables provide examples of donor government, development bank, research organization, and private sector efforts that examine how to use public climate finance to leverage private capital for climate change mitigation projects in developing countries. These tables are intended to...

This document provides an array of relevant papers, publications, and resources that address: 1) Using Public Resources to Leverage Private Sector Participation; 2) Types of Public Financing Instruments and Mechanisms; and 3) Other Contextual Publications. These reading resources represent the...

A Primer on Public Climate Financing Instruments Used to Leverage Private Capital

Targeting public finance to leverage private sector capital can help meet the several hundred billion dollars of annual low-carbon investment required in developing countries. This working paper serves as a primer, demonstrating how the public sector can employ different types of public...

The G2A2 includes representatives ranging from financial institutions like HSBC, to corporations like Walmart, to key public sector actors like the World Bank Group. WRI joins the effort alongside other environmentally focused organizations as an “analytical supporter,” providing research input and guidance to the G2A2’s upcoming activities.

Google is backing it. So is Warren Buffett, America’s most-watched investor. GE, one of the world’s biggest manufacturers, is too.

Each of these corporate icons is placing big bets and hundreds of millions of dollars on a future powered by wind and solar power. Apple just joined them, announcing plans to power its main U.S. data center in Maiden, North Carolina, entirely with renewable energy by the end of this year. So why - yet again - are pundits making dire warnings about prospects for renewable energy?

The answer is that the clean tech industry is at a critical crossroads.

Clean tech in the United States has been on the rise in recent years— even through the recession and other challenges. Increasing wind power, falling solar costs, expanding electric vehicle markets, government stimulus and other investments have built a global clean tech sector that topped $263 billion last year.

In the first quarter of 2012, however, global clean energy investment dropped to its lowest level since 2008. Good news stories are being replaced with headlines about closing factories, bankruptcies, and cancelled projects. Clean tech appears to be at a crucial inflection point.

Opportunities in China for impact investing are growing, where investors look to create positive social and environmental benefits alongside returns. Impact investors actively choose to put their money into companies that address social and environmental issues through their business models. Tao Zhang, the Chief Operating Officer of New Ventures, WRI’s center for environmental entrepreneurship with local operations in China and five other high growth markets, answers questions on the country’s current investment climate for environmentally-focused small and medium enterprises (SMEs).